


Brother in Arms

by NicoleAnell



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-21
Updated: 2011-09-21
Packaged: 2017-10-24 00:11:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/256652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NicoleAnell/pseuds/NicoleAnell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written from bsg_epics "unlikely friendship" prompt -- Lee & Caprica-Six.  Set during Daybreak.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Brother in Arms

The Cylons who come on Galactica's last mission are thin from the start. Most are staying with the fleet (and Lee realizes with minor horror that they've become the line of defense, the baseship with its human admiral and president guarding what's left of their people). A few are down in CIC making some frakked-up altar to Anders that Lee prefers not to think about. One or two are herding the metal toasters, though more of them seem to be doing fine on their own. Also: not toasters. Lee's been better at keeping his language in check. Centurions, Cylon fighters. Allies.

One of the Sixes wants to be with the marines, and he directs her to C-deck with a rifle and a vest. The helmet rests under her arm, like she'll drop it once she's got her station; Athena wouldn't always wear hers either. "We're all on the same side here," he says loudly to no one in particular -- but none of them bat an eye at her. He thinks he sees Showboat half-smile in her direction and then go back to checking the comms. Regardless Lee steps in front of her, and gestures to take her aside without quite touching her arm. "Look, I know..." he starts, fumbling to find some common ground, "I know you want to take these guys down as much as we do. I get it." He doesn't, but he's trying.

"I want Hera with her family," she says looking straight ahead. "That's what I want."

"Right," he agrees, quickly changing directions. "I know. I know what she- I know she means a lot to you."

Something tightens in her face but she only says, "Yes."

"You ought to put your helmet on," he says in the awkward silence. "They may look like nothing, but I promise they help." He doesn't push a joke about her not being indestructible anymore. They're all on the same side. "And look," he says, "I don't care if you're here to shoot things, or for Hera, or for God -- we needed everyone. You're holding the line from this space. Someone gives you an order, you follow it."

"I know how this works," she tells him gently.

"It's not that you're..." He forces a smile. Allies. "This is the speech I give for civilians, okay?"

"I'm not a civilian," she says, guarded. He isn't touching this.

"Good hunting then," he says and starts back toward the hangar deck without another glance.

He hears her voice behind him suddenly. "You don't know what she means," she says, and he doesn't know if it's a challenge or just something she didn't want to go to her grave holding back. The truth is he doesn't _care_ \-- like he said, they needed anyone, whether they want to worship Helo's daughter as the future of the Cylons or not. But he turns and looks at her, and she seems more sad than zealous. "I was supposed to protect her," the Six says calmly. "I saw it. Your president saw it, all of us did."

The recognition makes him twitch and stare at her. He saw her cross the line of tape, behind Tigh and Ellen, and he didn't see it then. This Six, he knows her name. He remembers her in the brig, holding Baltar's pen to her lips in a way that made him ache with understanding and guilt. He remembers her the day he'd given them amnesty -- Anders and Chief and Tigh, who was one of them now, and always one of them, and Lee had almost killed him by his own hand twenty minutes before. They brought her a jacket for the surface of the planet, and he told her with forced civility, "There's a baseship landing with us. The guards can escort you, if you want." She looked so lost for a minute. She figured out it had to do with the Five, and wanted to talk to "Saul", and for that Lee never believed (still did not believe) she didn't know more than she said she did, but that was over because they had Earth. She was pregnant, and that's over now too, and so is Earth.

"We can't lose her," she's saying. "We can't lose her, she..." He sees her face crumple quickly, uncontrolled. She lost a child, he keeps thinking stupidly, and he doesn't say it because he's keeping his language in check. She only nearly crying for a moment before she collects herself, a glimmer of self-aware anger in her eyes and her jaw, and Lee suddenly feels -- not distrust, she looks too much like Kara in that moment for him to shrink from it -- he believes that she might kill someone today, and he is fine with this as long as it's the other direction she's shooting in.

He says, "We're gonna do this." He wants it to sound true. He tries to say, "I'm sorry about-" and she blessedly cuts him off.

"Thank you, Lee."

"And my callsign's Apollo. Is what I'd tell you if you were a civilian." He knows her name before she says it, but still asks, "You want me to call you...?"

"Caprica. Caprica's fine." It occurs to him dimly that no one's said those words in years.

His impulse is to bite his tongue, and he doesn't want to go to his grave holding this back either. "I'm from there," he says. "Caprica."

She nods slightly. "I know. So am I."

He feels like it should make him angry, make him debate that, but he doesn't. He tries to conjure an image of his home and it feels far away; the only thing he thinks of is his nameplate on Colonial One, and the dried blood covering it, and then her standing here with tired eyes. All he says is, "Put your helmet on, Caprica," and it sounds enough like an order that she follows it deliberately, though not very urgently.

It fits her well enough, and she goes as far as buckling it under her chin. She lifts her head and smiles just a little, like she knows a secret about him. She says, "Does it make you feel safer if I'm wearing it?"

"You know what, it does," he fires back. "I like to imagine most of us aren't here to get ourselves killed. I'm not."

She doesn't break her gaze on him. "I'm not either," she says then, defensively, even though she seems to have just decided.

He says, "Good," having just firmly decided that too.


End file.
